T-Mobile Launches Venture Capital Fund To Drive 5G Innovation

By Dan Anderson ● Oct 22, 2020
  • T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) announced it is fueling 5G innovation by setting up a new multi-year investment fund through T-Mobile Ventures that is focused on early and emerging companies that are developing 5G products and services

T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) announced it is fueling 5G innovation by setting up a new multi-year investment fund through T-Mobile Ventures that is focused on early and emerging growth companies developing groundbreaking 5G products and services for the T-Mobile network.

T-Mobile Ventures’ portfolio companies are going to benefit from T-Mobile’s network and engineering expertise, go-to-market infrastructure, and funding as they work towards developing, testing, and bringing to market the next big thing in 5G. And T-Mobile Ventures will initially target the development of 5G products and services in areas such as Edge Compute, Security, Future of Work, and Industrial IoT.

Now that Sprint is part of T-Mobile, the combined company is quickly lighting up mid-band 5G with 2.5 GHz spectrum in over 200 cities and towns, bringing customers in these areas average download speeds of 300 Mbps and peak speeds up to 1 Gbps. And with a nationwide Standalone 5G network available in over 7,500 cities and towns, this is the time for developers to build transformative 5G applications. In Standalone 5G areas, T-Mobile has already been seeing up to a 40% improvement in latency during testing.

Through its supercharged 5G network as the foundation, T-Mobile is working to build the 5G ecosystem. And the company collaborates with universities and standards bodies to support 5G research and development. Plus it also runs the award-winning T-Mobile Accelerator and is a co-founder of the 5G Open Innovation Lab.

T-Mobile Ventures is working with corporate venture capital firm Touchdown Ventures to help manage the fund.

KEY QUOTES:

“T-Mobile Ventures is part of our mission to give customers the best 5G network in the country – one that will serve all Americans, stimulate competition, and create tremendous economic value. With our 5G network at the foundation, we see massive opportunity across both business and consumer segments, and we’re excited to help fuel the wave of 5G applications coming to market in the years ahead.”

— Jason Young, Senior Vice President of Partnerships and T-Mobile Ventures

“Compelling 5G use cases span the range of spectrum bands from low, mid to high, and only T-Mobile has these assets giving it a 5G network that can support all use cases across every industry. Now is the time for the developers, entrepreneurs, and creators to make the magic happen with products and services that will unleash the potential of our 5G network.”

— Neville Ray, President of Technology at T-Mobile